A Transformer model for precessing binary black-hole merger waveforms calibrated to numerical relativity

Abstract

We present a Transformer model for merger-centered gravitational waveforms from precessing binary black holes. Given the mass ratio and two three-dimensional spin vectors, the network predicts quintic B-spline coefficients for all 21 signed spin-weighted spherical-harmonic strain modes through $\ell=4$ on $[-1100,80]M$ ($M$ being the total binary mass), enforcing binary-exchange and equatorial-reflection equivariance and yielding $C^4$ waveforms in time with exact automatic differentiation. The model is pretrained on numerical-relativity (NR) waveforms from the SXS and RIT catalogues together with synthetic NRSur7dq4, SEOBNRv5PHM, and perturbative waveforms, and fine-tuned on SXS strain data. On 176 held-out SXS waveforms (165 physical systems), it achieves a mean balanced root-mean-square strain error of $0.023$ and a mean detector mismatch at $120\,M_\odot$ of $0.059\%$.